The Altalena in 10 Minutes

Podcast: Everything Jewish - 10 Minutes at a Time · Adam Diament

Opublikowano: 2026-10-08

In June 1948, mere weeks after Israel's declaration of independence, the cargo ship Altalena steamed toward the coast laden with weapons and Irgun fighters, only to become the flashpoint of a deadly confrontation between Menachem Begin's Revisionists and David Ben-Gurion's provisional government. To Begin and his supporters the vessel represented a vital lifeline of arms for the embattled Jewish forces and a legitimate claim to a share of power; to Ben-Gurion it posed an intolerable threat to the newborn state's monopoly on force that risked civil war while Arab armies still pressed on every front. The IDF's shelling of the...